clear, honest, wholesome, innocent, intellectual, and most industrious
British bohemia, with lots of tobacco, lots of good music, plenty of
talk about literature and art, and not too much victuals or drink.
Many of its denizens, that were, have become Royal Academicians or
have risen to fame in other ways; some have had to take a back seat in
life; surprisingly few have gone to the bad.

This world, naturally, was not Leech's; if it had ever been, I doubt;
his bohemia, if he ever had lived in one, had been the bohemia of
medicine, not of art, and he seemed to us then to be living on social
heights of fame and sport and aristocratic splendour where none of us
dreamed of seeking him--and he did not seek us. We hated and despised
the bloated aristocracy, just as he hated and despised foreigners
without knowing much about them; and the aristocracy, to do it
justice, did not pester us with its obtrusive advances. But I never
heard Leech spoken of otherwise in bohemia than with affectionate
admiration, although many of us seemed to think that his best work was
done. Indeed, his work was becoming somewhat fitful in quality, and
already showed occasional signs of haste and illness and fatigue; his
fun was less genial and happy, though he drew more vigorously than
ever, and now and again surprised us by surpassing himself, as in his
series of Briggs in the Highlands a-chasing the deer.

All that was thirty years ago and more. I may say at once that I have
reconsidered the opinion I formed of John Leech at that time. Leech,
it is true, is by no means the one bright particular star, but he has
recovered much of his lost first magnitude: if he shines more by what
he has to say than by his manner of saying it, I have come to think
that that is the best thing of the two to shine by, if you cannot
shine by both; and I find that his manner was absolutely what it